Fundamental Differences, Intrinsic Similarities
by artlessICTOAN
Summary: It's Christmas Eve and Sayaka is just starting to realise what letting go of Touko actually means, luckily a passing stranger is there to offer some advice. Rarepair, Sayaka/Natsuki, Unrequited Sayaka/Touko & Natsuki/Yuu, Post-canon.


WOOO finally writing something for this series! been a long time coming but i suddenly got An Idea after rereading the whole thing and just ran to its logical conclusion.. it's weird that even though Yuu is possibly the character I relate to most in ALL of manga, my first fic for this series is focused on Sayaka.. buuut she's a precious girl who deserves the world so i'm not sorry about it, not sure how much more i'm gonna write for this fandom, guess it depends on how it ends, but in the meantime i'm always happy to hear ideas (though i also have 5000 other fics i should really be working on instead of this so i might be a lil slow in getting to them...)

this fic takes place sometime after the end of the manga (lets just assume that Yuu and Touko work everything out bc cMON GIRLS P LEASE)

Anyways, hope yall enjoy!

* * *

Snow lazily tumbled from the sky, barely enough to even really be called a proper snowfall, but the tiny flecks were still gradually piling up on the leaves above her and still burned at her exposed skin as she stared straight up. She didn't care how pretty the sight might be, didn't even care enough to enough to wipe her glasses clean of the snowflakes quickly melting on them, or to lift her head to relieve the pain of the wooden bench grating against the back of her skull.

Maybe if she stayed like this long enough the snow would bury her and she could go into hibernation until spring.

Paper crinkled in her hands as a shiver passed through her body, her frozen fingers clenching painfully. She lifted her head enough to glare down at the package in her lap and – for the first time in a long time – she felt a destructive urge to hurl the thing as far away as possible, as though it would carry away her shame and hurt with it.

What had she really expected would happen?

Clenching her fist until she heard something rip, she glared down at the tiny glimpse of lavender peeking out through the wrapping.

What had she really _wanted_ to happen?

It was rare that she got deeply angry, rarer still that she expressed it on her face, but, looking at the reminder of her painful day brought out the emotions she'd been so careful so hide from everyone, even herself. Launching herself to her feet, she lifted her arm and _threw_ , as hard as she could. She didn't bother to see where it had landed, just dropped heavily back down, head hanging off the back of the bench and eyes closed against the bitter winter chill.

So stupid. Immature, desperate-

"No, Hideo, bad, drop it!"

Sayaka's eyes snapped open and she almost fell off the bench in her haste to make herself presentable. It wasn't until a – now badly ripped – package was waved in front of her nose that she took the time to look at whoever had just disturbed her wallowing.

"I'm really sorry about that, did you drop this?"

She had to adjust her glasses, just to convince herself that her vision wasn't being wildly distorted, but no, apparently she was seeing things just fine. "How are you not freezing?" she asked, not even bothering to take the present still held out towards her.

Really, she was bundled up in a jumper, thick winter coat and scarf, yet this girl was wandering around in a thin hoodie – with the sleeves rolled _up_ for god's sake – and leggings. Her cheeks and nose were pretty red, but she wasn't even shivering, just panting a little, meanwhile Sayaka had lost all feeling in her toes twenty minutes ago.

The girl's laugh was loud and completely unashamed; she wasn't sure why, but it really irked her for some reason. "I was in the middle of a jog," she said, pulling on her dog's collar as it attempted to sniff at the tattered gift still in her hands. "So, uhh, you gonna take this back or what?"

"Oh, right." Arms feeling stiff and only barely under her control, she reached up to take it back.

If her apathy was noticed, it wasn't commented upon as the girl rambled on, "The paper's a bit ripped, but hopefully whatever's inside is safe, Hideo isn't usually that rough with his toys."

She idly poked a finger through a hole in the simple, pastel-blue wrapping paper. "It doesn't matter either way-" she sighed, dropping in into her lap at the same time as she dropped her head back against the bench with a painful clunk "-I'm not going to give it to her anymore."

"That's… I dunno, kinda sad." The bench creaked slightly as the girl sat down next to her. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

"Absolutely not."

Even without turning to look, she could see the cloud of a heavy exhale drifting up into the dark sky. "You sure? Sometimes it helps to have someone to vent to, y'know."

"No."

A cold finger poked at her cheek, urging her to tilt her head and glare at her companion, who was pouting like a toddler. "C'mooon, why not? We're total strangers, what're the odds we'll ever meet again? Would it help if I told you that I hardly ever come to this park?"

Sighing, Sayaka shuffled as far away as the bench would allow, eyeing the dog warily as it sniffed at her leg. "Are you going to keep bothering me if I don't say yes?"

"Probably," the stranger said with a wide grin.

She didn't want to talk about it, not to anyone, didn't even really want to _think_ about it, but then she looked down at her carefully wrapped gift, dotted with tears and stained with icy mud and the rage came bubbling back through her veins. If she threw it again, would the dog try and catch it? Or would the well-meaning stranger manage to retrieve it before it was ripped to pieces?

Maybe talking would help. At the very least it would hopefully get this girl to leave her alone.

"I… was planning to give this to a friend of mine, we've always exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve, ever since we first met; she would come over to my house and we would spend the whole day together, it was-" one of the few times Touko would relax her façade of perfection, just a _little_ , the only time she could truly indulge in her pathetic fantasies "-it was always my favourite time of the year."

"But not this year? What happened?"

A fleck of snow landed right between her brows, she instinctually reached up to wipe it away. "She found someone else to spend the day with."

"Someone, liiike…" The distinctly uncomfortable tone and awkward cough was enough to get Sayaka to look at her again, this time with a completely blank expression plastered across her face. "Ah, right, got it."

She rolled her eyes as she turned back to the sky, frowning at every falling snowflake. "I was _fine_ with how things were, I knew that I could never be that special to her, but as long as I could still be her close friend, like I always had been, then I would be fine." Just as long as things stayed the same.

But that had been a foolish dream, right from the beginning.

 _Of course_ things would change, it was an inevitability of life that nothing could last forever, entropy would always win in the end. She had just been too terrified to accept it until it was finally thrown in her face.

She'd known about their relationship – long before they'd officially announced it to the members of the student council – but even despite that, she'd somehow tricked herself into thinking their friendship wouldn't be affected. And she was happy for them, really, truly happy; Touko deserved to find someone who could love every side of her and if Koito was that person, well, she wouldn't stand in their way, if only that naïve, hopeful part of her hadn't clung so tightly to the image in her head of a Touko who could look at _her_ that way, no matter how hard she tried to quash it.

Who was she even really mad at right now? Touko? It wasn't like they had ever officially said that they would always exchange gifts on Christmas eve, Sayaka had just assumed that she would hold to their little tradition of the last two years.

Koito? That would be petty, she'd never even known about it in the first place and of course she would want to spend the day with her girlfriend.

Herself? Well, a little bit certainly, but she also couldn't deny that it was a little rude of Touko to not call or text her at all today, just to wish a friend happy holidays, or even if only to let her know that she'd be busy so they would have to exchange their gifts tomorrow at school.

No, she was mostly just angry. Angry at love for being so messy, angry at the weather for being so cold, angry that she now had a handmade gift to find a use for because giving it to Touko just felt like it would be reminding her of the feelings she'd been trying _so_ hard to bury and, even as bitter as she still felt, she didn't want to put that unnecessary stress on her best friend.

"I just, I'm being selfish. I don't want to let go."

It wasn't until something heavy dropped on her lap that she remembered she wasn't alone. Blinking away any tears that had been threatening to fall, she glared at the dog laying its head on top of her legs until it got the message and returned to its owner.

The owner herself was giving her a strange look, one that she didn't much care for.

"I'm… really sorry to hear that," she said, rubbing at the back of her neck and offering a forced smile, "it must be hard for you, huh?"

Suddenly, her brief moment of sadness was chased away by a fresh wave of anger and _this_ time she had somewhere to direct it. "Why are you so interested?" she asked, voice toppling on the thin line between curt and outright rude – if her mother could hear her now, she'd be appalled, but she wasn't and for once she didn't care.

"I dunno, I'm just trying to cheer up a stranger here, anyone would do the same."

Her eyes narrowed further as she said, "No, most people would return the dropped item, wish me a nice day and hurry back home into the warm." She ran her eyes along that annoyingly-exposed, lanky body, frowning when she didn't catch even the slightest shiver. "And _how_ are you not cold?"

She snickered slightly, her eyes crinkling in a way that she absolutely refused to admit was cute. "I just run hot, I guess."

"Well, you should probably start running again soon, before you get sick," Sayaka said, burrowing a little deeper into her scarf – she was _not_ hiding a pout and if asked directly she would vehemently deny such a thing.

Much to her annoyance, the girl did not resume her jog, instead she sighed and stretched her long legs out, crossing her arms behind her head. "You've got a pretty face, the kind that makes you look like you never get angry at anything, it's just fun to make people like you say what you're really feeling." Sayaka was slightly in awe of how utterly comfortable she managed to look as she slumped on the bench, one foot idly twirling in the air for her dog to swat at.

It wasn't entirely dissimilar to how she would sometimes dangle her arm off her bed to taunt her own pets into pounce out from their hiding places. Though at least the dog seemed to know the difference between play fighting and physical assault.

"I have another friend like that actually," the stranger continued, a hazy, distant look in her eyes as she stared up at the clouds, "she was always so calm and easy-going, never got mad, never cried, took everything in her stride, which was great and all, but I always felt like our relationship only went one way, y'know?"

Brows furrowing, Sayaka pulled her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them tightly. "Was?"

"Yeah, this was back in middle-school, she's changed a lot since then," the girl said, awkwardly shrugging her shoulders while adamantly refusing to remove her hands from their position behind her neck. "I'm glad though, even though we don't see each other as much anymore, I feel like we can actually be even closer now, before I couldn't even go to her with my problems without feeling guilty that I was using her, but now she complains to me all the time about homework and her one annoying senpai and everything… It's just nice to know that someone's gotten her to open up, even if it wasn't me like I'd hoped."

That hit _far_ too close to home.

Her hands clenched, fingers digging tightly into her tight-clad legs. "You don't feel jealous? Whoever changed her is probably closer to her now than you'll ever be." If she didn't calm down, she was going to rip holes in them, so she tried her best to release all her tension with a long, slow breath.

"Wow, you really don't mince words, do ya?" Surprisingly, the girl was actually laughing at her, grin showing off teeth and eyes sparkling with mirth.

"You're dodging the question."

Still giggling slightly, she pushed herself out of her recline, leaning heavily on her hands as she watched her pet sniffing at a tree. " _Obviously_ I'm jealous, most people would be, but getting hung up on stuff like that's only gonna bring me down; she's happier now and we're still good friends, so what's the point in being sad about it."

She hated how easy she made it all sound. "I think that's more than a little naïve."

"Well, no one ever said letting go is painless, but you're gonna drop sooner or later anyways, so it's best to do it on your own terms." The gentle smile she turned on her made Sayaka's heart skip, just for a second. "Even if we weren't friends anymore, I've got lots of good memories to keep me going until I find a new special person, maybe even someone who _I_ could help grow into the best person they can be this time, I mean that's all love really is, isn't it?"

Was it? She'd spent so long wrapped up in Touko's twisted definition of the word, that she'd long since stopped questioning what she herself thought it meant.

Growing and changing, together; not something static, a delicate ornament to hide away in a display cabinet – safe and pristine, yet untouched – but clay in constant motion, building upon suggested forms, smoothing away the jagged edges, twisting and reforming into an ever-changing improvement on every past iteration. She sighed. "It does sound nice, but…"

"You gotta dream it's possible, else you'll just spend your whole life miserable."

She blinked at the girl for several seconds before finally giving an offended sniff and snapping her head away. The splutter of someone spitting hair out of their face brought a tiny smile to her lips. "You're awfully presumptuous, you know that?"

The snort suggested that she didn't do a terribly good job of hiding the smile from her voice.

"And you're awfully deflective, princess," the girl said, jumping up and circling until they were once again face-to-face.

She'd never quite seen the appeal of short hair, but even she had to admit that it suited this girl perfectly and she might not be as tall as Touko, but she had long, lean muscle to make up for it and that _grin_ , it was a little crooked, but bright and sunny and completely… honest.

Fighting down the lurch of her stomach, she jolted to her feet, carefully brushing down her skirt and looking slightly down at her companion.

"Well, I should really be going now, uh…"

Pulling on her dog's lead to bring him back to her side, she tilted her head up enough to meet her eyes, smile softening as she said, "Sonomura Natsuki."

"Right, Sonomura-san-" she nodded, pulling her coat a little tighter "-thank you for talking with me. It helped." Praying that her smile didn't look too unnatural, she stepped away from the bench, already eyeing the path to home.

"What, I don't get to know your name too?"

Feeling a sudden burn to her cheeks that she decided to blame on a passing breeze, she turned back around and bowed. "…Saeki Sayaka."

By the time she'd risen, the grin was back full-force. "Nice to meet cha Saeki-chan."

Despite the flagrant lack of manners, she found she couldn't frown for more than a few seconds, before shaking her head and saying, "It was nice to meet you too, even if you have a distressing lack of respect, have a safe jog home."

As the girl said her thanks and farewells, she turned around to follow the path, but she stopped abruptly only a few feet away, the crinkling of paper in her hand drawing her eyes down. Part of her still wanted to destroy it, pretend that today had never happened and just throw it into the river on the way home, but…

Biting back a groan, she spun round and shoved the thing into Sonomura's unsuspecting arms.

"Here, you probably need it anyway." Not waiting for a reply, she turned back towards home before her blush could betray her. She managed to get several yards before a shout called her attention back.

"Heeeeey!"

Forcing her face as blank as it would go, she twisted her neck just far enough to see the girl jogging in place, waving one arm wildly as her dog bounced around her legs.

"Thank you!"

Sayaka nodded once, then started walking again.

The scarf didn't suit her at all – the colour was meant for someone with paler skin and greyer eyes and the feminine pattern didn't match her athletic tracksuit in the slightest – and the hat was clearly too big for her judging by the way it kept slipping over her eyes, but she had to admit, she'd looked happier to receive it than Touko ever would have. Maybe that alone was more than worth it.


End file.
